Readers Already Picking Up the Interactive Slack

Peter Brantley
July 11, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Harlequin announced this week the launch of Enhanced Edition ebooks, which link out to Net resources that augment the value and experience of the books. At Electric Alphabet, Kate Eltham notes that, in a way, this has already been happening by the readers, not by the publishers:

Last year I read Spook Country by William Gibson ... I remember Gibson saying in an interview at the time that "every text today has a kind of spectral quasi-hypertext surrounding it ... all of the Googled information that found its way into the book but which isn't available to the reader as a literal hypertext unless you're willing to be the animator of the hypertext process ..."

Blogs and social media are already making this spectral hypertext less quasi and more actual. But as Gibson predicted, other text was destined to follow.

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